with a loud and piercing voice, _Unworthy wretch! how dare you ask what
you have done? Look on your past life, and see what you have left
undone? Ask thyself, why thou wert not long ago in the merciless hands
of death? Why not drowned in Yarmouth roads, or killed in the fight,
when the ship was taken by the Sallee man of war? Why not entombed in
the bowels of wild beasts on the African coast, or drowned here when all
thy companions suffered shipwreck in the ocean._

Struck dumb with these reflections, I rose up in a pensive manner, being
so thoughtful that I could not go to sleep; and fearing the dreadful
return of my distemper, it caused me to remember, that the Brazilians
use tobacco for almost all diseases. I then went to my chest in older to
find some, where Heaven, no doubt, directed me to find a cure for both
soul and body; for there I found one of the Bibles, which, till this
time, I had neither leisure nor inclination to look into, I took both
the tobacco and that out of the chest, and laid them on the table.
Several experiments did I try with the tobacco: First, I took a piece or
leaf, and chewed it; but it being very green and strong, almost
stupified me. Next I steeped it in some rum an hour or two, resolving
when I went to bed to take a dole of it: and, in the third place, I
burnt some over a pan of fire, holding my nose over it as long as I
could endure it without suffocation.

In the intervals of this operation, though my head was giddy and
disturbed by the tobacco, I took up the Bible to read. No sooner did I
open it, but there appeared to me these words _Call on me in the day of
trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shall glorify me_.

At first this sentence made a very deep impression on my heart, but it
soon wore off again, when I considered the word _deliver_ was foreign to